Pepsi / interactive

One of the most memorable moments in my life was produced by The Simpsons trading cards made by Skybox in the 90´s. There was this special type of card that included some sort of magic or trickery.

You obviously can´t see the effect but the image could move! It was a very simple movement (of 3 or 4 frames) but it was so amazing that you could watch it for hours, no kidding.

Many years passed and I still was intrigued, I started searching on the internet and I discovered how this was achieved:

Lenticular printing is a technology in which lenticular lenses (a technology that is also used for 3D displays) are used to produce printed images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles.

I discovered a book named Magic Moving Images that used a very similar process in which you needed a type of black striped decoder on top of a strange looking image.

Decoder:

Weird looking image:

But how to achieve movement? After many attempts I figured out something. You need to be aware of how long do you want your animation to be, in other words keep in mind the number of frames you want because the width of the stripes will depend on that. Let’s say you want 4 frames of movement, you will need to draw those frames separately. If you see the decoder there is a space between each black stripe, that size of the space is not the same as the stripes but the stripes are 4 times thicker than that space. If you need a 6 frame animation then that black stripes need to be 6 times thicker than the one of the space.

Voila!

Here comes a better result:

And a much much better result:

Now comes the tricky part. If you wanted to make 3D animations, like rotating logos or pieces the same principle would apply but if you want to have transparencies that same principle needs to be applied by breaking the 4th wall. You would need to use a monitor, stop motion animation, light painting and long exposure techniques.

Let me show you an example I did using my iPhone and a segmented 3D text done with Cinema 4D.

Keep in mind this:

Your iphone/ipad/monitor works as the black stripe

You need to build the 3D text or model on your computer

That same model needs to be segmented, think of how a scanner works.

It works better on low light conditions.

In your camera use settings for taking long exposure photos.

I did this video for a contest from MOFILM, and I decided to use this techniques that I have shown you.

Pepsi is looking for a compelling advertisement for Italian TV that will tell young creatives all about their new campaign, “Refresh Your World”.